Friday, August 25, 2006

"Laura Rozen, guest-blogging for the Washington Monthly, wonders if "the marketing campaign" for war with Iran has begun, noting what the deputy director of operations for the joint chief of staffs said over at the Pentagon the other day:

"The Iranian government is training and equipping much of the Shiite insurgency in Iraq, a senior U.S. general said Wednesday, drawing one of the most direct links by the Pentagon. ..."

The Iranians have had their hand in this pie from the word go. Our friend Ahmed Chalabi, touted by the neocons as the George Washington of "democratic" Iraq, was and is no doubt still quite friendly with the mullahs: such a good friend that he purportedly passed off to them vital U.S. secrets which seriously compromised our intelligence-gathering efforts in Iran.

Another interesting angle on Shulsky's academic hobbyhorse is the Staussian belief that the ignorant masses cannot be trusted with the truth, while the elite philosopher-kings fulfill the vital function of constructing and upholding "myths" necessary for social and political cohesion. Strauss, in short, is the philosopher of the "noble lie," and surely no thinker is more suited to providing a theoretical framework for the work carried out by Shulsky and his neocon confreres.

Already, the neocons have launched a trial balloon in the form of a congressional report [.pdf] taking the intelligence community to task for supposedly underestimating the Iranian nuclear capability and Tehran's hostile intentions.

As I have said before in this space, the Democrats are not above out-warmongering the GOP on the question of Iran, and that means there is no natural brake on the sociopathic militarism inherent in this administration. After their failure in Iraq, and a brief exile in the wilderness, the neocons are riding high again – and that means endless troubles for us all."